Decorative food products, such as cakes, are popular items, particularly for special occasions, such as birthdays, holidays, weddings, anniversaries and other celebratory events. These items are typically purchased from bakeries, since they require some skill and/or apparatus to create. Previously, these items were created from colored frostings applied manually by trained bakery chefs. The creation of these hand-decorated items were time and labor intensive. Normally a customer will either buy a stock item from the bakery or else place an order for a special item then return to pick the order up at a later date. These manually created items are at best a stylized rendition of the desired image and limited by the skill of the baker.
There have been a number of attempts previously to provide alternatives to the manually created decorating process. One such alternative that is presently widely used is the use of pre-made decorative items which are then placed on the food product. These pre-made items are produced in bulk and inventoried until use. The use of such pre-made decorative items precludes uniquely decorated and/or personalized decorations. Also, these pre-made decorative items must be either ordered, which requires a long lead time, or stored in inventory at the risk of under ordering or over ordering, as well as the cost of such inventory. Another alternative has been to utilize an automated system for decorating cakes.
One example of such a system is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,910,661, issued to Barth et al. This system uses a video system to create an image, which is then applied to the cake by controlled movement of an X-Y table beneath a set of spray nozzles which dispense colored liquid onto the cake. This system is cumbersome and complicated and requires operator intervention.
One other system is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,578,273, issued to Krubert. This system uses a series of stations through which the food product is conveyed. At one station, a series of colored images are stamped onto the food product to form an image. This process is geared toward mass production of products having identical images since the stamps are formed in a single image. The stamps must be changed in order to create another image.
Another prior attempt is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,505,775, issued to Kitos. This system utilizes an integrated work surface controlled with a computer system. An image is scanned into the computer system. The computer system then uses a motion control system to manipulate a drop on demand colorant expulsion system over a cake carried on the work surface to reproduce the scanned image. This system requires a flat surface on the top of the cake since it is incapable of vertical axis movement. The choice of colors is limited to the three-color single cartridge colorant expulsion system.
These systems also produce the decorations and images directly onto the food product. Since these food products are produced at the bakery, the decorated food product must then be transported to the event. Many times the decorated food product is damaged in transit. Also, this increases the expense many times in transporting the entire decorated food product.
None of these systems are truly capable of providing an on-demand system that can create a near-photographic reproduction of an image in an edible format. There is a need for such a system.